Englishman date their travels between the years 1325 and 1355; but
while Ibn Batuta, the traveller from Tangiers, adds very valuable
information to our geographical knowledge, we have to lay the travel
volumes of Sir John Mandeville aside and acknowledge sadly that his
book is made up of borrowed experiences, that he has wantonly added
fiction to fact, and distorted even the travel stories told by other
travellers. And yet, strange to say, while the work of Ibn Batuta
remains entirely disregarded, the delightful work of the Englishman
is still read vigorously to-day and translated into nearly every
European language. In it we read strange stories of Prester John, "the
great Emperor of India, who is served by seven kings, seventy-two dukes,
and three hundred and sixty earls"; he speaks of the "isle of Cathay":
he repeats the legend of the island near Java on which Adam and Eve
wept for one hundred years after they had been driven from Paradise;
he speaks of giants thirty feet high, and of Pigmies who came dancing
to see him.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE ON HIS TRAVELS. From a MS. in the
British Museum.]

We turn to the Arab traveller for a solid document, which rings more
true, and we cannot doubt his accounts of shipwreck and hardships
encountered by the way. Ibn Batuta left Tangiers in the year 1324 at
the early age of twenty-one on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He made his way
across the north of Africa to Alexandria. Here history relates he met
a learned and pious man named Imam.

"I perceive," said Imam, "that you are fond of visiting distant
countries?"

"That is so," answered Ibn Batuta.

"Then you must visit my brother in India, my brother in Persia, and
my brother in China, and when you see them present my compliments to
them."

Ibn Batuta left Alexandria with a resolve to visit these three persons,
and indeed, wonderful to say, he found them all three and presented
to them their brother's compliments.

He reached Mecca and remained there for three years, after which he
voyaged down the Red Sea to Aden, a port of much trade. Coasting along
the east coast of Africa, he reached Mombasa, from which port, so soon
to fall into the hands of the Portuguese, he sailed to Ormuz, a "city
on the seashore," at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Here he tells
us of the head of a fish "that might be compared to a hill: its eyes
were like two doors, so that people could go in at one eye and out
at the other." Crossi